difficult, cases which formed, perhaps, the bulk of his
practice, when he was informed of a most mysterious murder that had taken
place in another part of the same building on the previous Saturday
afternoon. Owing to the circumstances of the case, only the vaguest
account had appeared in the morning papers, and even this, as it chanced,
Hewitt had not read.

The building was one of a new row in a partly rebuilt street near the
National Gallery. The whole row had been built by a speculator for the
purpose of letting out in flats, suites of chambers, and in one or two
cases, on the ground floors, offices. The rooms had let very well, and to
desirable tenants, as a rule. The least satisfactory tenant, the
proprietor reluctantly admitted, was a Mr. Rameau, a negro gentleman,
single, who had three rooms on the top floor but one of the particular
building that Hewitt was visiting. His rent was paid regularly, but his
behavior had produced complaints from other tenants. He got uproariously
drunk, and screamed and howled in unknown tongues. He fell asleep on the
staircase, and ladies were afraid to pass. He bawled rough chaff down the
stairs and along the corridors at butcher-boys and messengers, and played
on errand-boys brutal practical jokes that ended in police-court
summonses. He once had a way of sliding down the balusters, shouting: "Ho!
ho! ho! yah!" as he went, but as he was a big, heavy man, and the
balusters had been built for different treatment, he had very soon and
very firmly been requested to stop it. He had plenty of money, and spent
it freely; but it was generally felt that there was too much of the
light-hearted savage about him to fit him to live among quiet people.

How much longer the landlord would have stood this sort of thing, Hewitt's
informant said, was a matter of conjecture, for on the Saturday afternoon
in question the tenancy had come to a startling full-stop. Rameau had been
murdered in his room, and the body had, in the most unaccountable fashion,
been secretly removed from the premises.

The strongest possible suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed in
shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for
several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime
had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself
had been heard, again and again, to threaten Ramean, who, in his brutal
fashion, had made a butt of him. This man was a